SOURCE: "Marivaux and the Human Heart," in The Emory University Quarterly, Vol. XII, No. 1, March, 1956, pp. 35-43.

In the excerpt below, Haac discusses Marivaux's techniques of characterization, contending that the figures in his plays are "not generalized or abstract symbols" but "highly individual and sensitive. "

The modern rediscovery of an author like Marivaux is an exciting experience and a key to the literary temper of our generation. For almost two centuries the passionate oratory of Voltaire's plays, with their sweeping moralistic overtones, aroused far greater enthusiasm, but today the subtle and brilliant comedies of Marivaux (1688-1763), in the spirit of the Parisian salon society of the prerevolutionary era, are produced more frequently on the French stage than the works of any other author of the century, including Beaumarchais. In the repertoire of the Comédie Française he yields only to Molière, the patron saint of the...